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Democracy Dies in Darkness Sections Home Try 1 month for $1 Username Sign In Account Profile Newsletters & Alerts Gift Subscriptions Contact Us Help Desk Subscribe Account Profile Newsletters & Alerts Gift Subscriptions Contact Us Help Desk Accessibility for screenreader The Switch by Elizabeth Dwoskin May 24 at 12:49 PM Email the author Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, faced questions from European lawmakers this week about privacy. (Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg News) SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley companies for months have been rewriting their privacy policies to make them clearer in time for a Friday deadline — the day Europe ushers in sweeping new privacy laws that could affect users worldwide. The new law could spell the end of legalese — of an era of signing away your rights with a single click, experts said. But it could also have the opposite effect, of creating more … [Read more...] about New privacy rules could spell the end of legalese — or create a lot more fine print

Music video streamer Vevo will shut down its mobile apps and consumer streaming website in the coming weeks, making YouTube even more dominant in how people watch its catalog of thousands of official music videos.Vevo is a popular purveyor of online music videos, but most people probably know it best as the little watermark on the corner of more than 300,000 official music videos on YouTube. Though Vevo publishes some of the most-viewed videos on the planet, the company itself has struggled for years to carve out a life of its own, out of the shadow of YouTube, which is both the source of most of its viewing and a partial owner of the company. (Two of the world's biggest record labels are also part owners.)Vevo said in a blog post Thursday it'll "phase out elements" of its owned and operated platforms, which are primarily mobile apps and apps for streaming media boxes like Roku and Apple TV. A company representative said that means it'll be shutting down its mobile apps … [Read more...] about Vevo will phase out standalone apps to exist pretty much only on YouTube

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Uber [UBER.UL] disabled an emergency braking system in a self-driving vehicle that struck and killed a woman in Arizona in March and which failed to properly identify the pedestrian, raising serious questions about its performance, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report released on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators examine a self-driving Uber vehicle involved in a fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona, U.S., March 20, 2018. A women was struck and killed by the vehicle on March 18, 2018. National Transportation Safety Board/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. - RC124083F3B0 The report said the modified 2017 Volvo XC90 radar systems observed the pedestrian six seconds before impact but “the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle.” At 1.3 … [Read more...] about Uber disabled emergency braking in self-driving car: U.S. agency

Pornhub is giving you a way to browse in anonymity. The company said Thursday that it's rolling out a free VPN called VPNhub.A VPN is a virtual private network. CNET's Laura Hautala describes it like this: "A VPN redirects your internet traffic, disguising where your computer, phone or other device is when it makes contact with websites." It also encrypts information when you send it across the internet. In other words: It's exactly the sort of tool you'd want to cover your tracks when you're watching adult videos online."While many people employ a VPN service for any number of reasons while browsing the Internet, a good number of them use it to circumvent and bypass restrictions to access adult content," said Pornhub Vice President Corey Price in a statement. Price also said you can use the VPN for general internet browsing. There's also a premium version of the VPN with faster browsing speeds that costs $11.99 a month for Android users and $14 for iOS.The best … [Read more...] about Pornhub wants you to use its new VPN

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Criminals have stolen about $1.2 billion in cryptocurrencies since the beginning of 2017, as bitcoin’s popularity and the emergence of more than 1,500 digital tokens have put the spotlight on the unregulated sector, according to estimates from the Anti-Phishing Working Group released on Thursday. Representations of the Ripple, Bitcoin, Etherum and Litecoin virtual currencies are seen on a PC motherboard in this illustration picture, February 13, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration The estimates were part of the non-profit group’s research on cryptocurrency and include reported and unreported theft. “One problem that we’re seeing in addition to the criminal activity like drug trafficking and money laundering using cryptocurrencies is the theft of these tokens by bad guys,” Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of cryptocurrency security firm CipherTrace, told Reuters in an interview. Jevans is also chairman of APWG. Of … [Read more...] about About $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen since 2017: cybercrime…

San Francisco-based Getaround is launching in Seattle today with a transportation service that’s a bit like Airbnb for cars. The car sharing service allows people to rent their cars to their neighbors without the hassle of exchanging keys, offering a new transportation option in a city that’s become increasingly congested. Getaround equips each car in its marketplace with hardware called Getaround Connect that syncs up with a smartphone app. Users can find cars in the app, make a reservation, and unlock the car without ever meeting its owner. In newer models, the driver can just push to start. In older cars, the keys are kept securely in the vehicle. Getaround co-founder and CEO Sam Zaid said that even before officially launching, the service is seeing faster growth in Seattle than it did in San Francisco at the beginning. There are already about 60-70 cars available for rent in Seattle. “The city has tremendous traffic issues and one of the real benefits of what we … [Read more...] about Rent a car from your neighbor? Getaround launches novel mobility service in Seattle

When Rover started seven years ago, many in the startup community snickered. There was no real business model, they said. A marketplace that matched dog owners with caretakers wouldn’t work, they said. It only got off the ground because of its well-connected venture capitalist founder, they said. As it turns out, the naysayers barked up the wrong tree. Rover today announced a massive $155 million funding round, propelling the Seattle-based company to near-unicorn status and making it one of the highest-valued privately-held startups in the Pacific Northwest. It’s one of the largest investments in a Washington company ever; other recent large fundraising rounds include SpaceFlight ($150 million), OfferUp ($130 million), and Remitly ($115 million), according to PitchBook data. A majority of the round — $125 million — was led by T. Rowe Price, the publicly-owned global asset management firm that has backed companies like FlipKart, Glassdoor, Redfin, Twitter, … [Read more...] about Once a startup runt, Rover laps up $155 million for tech-fueled pet care marketplace

The stories format has been one of the most sticky features of social apps like Snapchat and Instagram, letting users stitch together video, photo and text overlays to convey moods and experiences to friends and followers; even Google has incorporated stories into its services. Now Airbnb is becoming the latest adopter of the format: the travel and accommodations startup has quietly launched a new feature called Travel Stories, a way for guests to create video sequences of their Airbnb experiences to post on the site. The company has sent out invitations for a beta of the service to a pool of users (pictured below, sent to us by reader Matteo Gamba, who runs an Airbnb blog). A FAQ page about the new format says that for now Story making is only available on the latest version of its iPhone app, under the Travel Stories tab of your profile. Video clips are limited to 10 seconds each and are taken from your camera roll and can be edited in the Airbnb app. You can then look at the … [Read more...] about Airbnb quietly launches its own Stories for users to build video montages of their travels

The Google Lens features announced at I/O 2018 are rolling out to users right now. The new features include the ability to copy text from the real world to your phone. No app updates are required on the user’s part, as the rollout seems to be on Google’s end. The new Google Lens features made for quite an impression at Google I/O 2018, as the company demonstrated a variety of machine vision features. Now, it looks like Google is quietly delivering a new UI and these features to a growing number of users.The rollout, first spotted by 9to5 Google, has also arrived on my personal Oreo-toting Galaxy S8 — no user-side updates required. You clearly don’t need to run the Android P developer preview to get it, either. The update brings a new UI and an overhauled introductory section. However, the redesign plays second fiddle to the new features. The copy/paste functionality is very polished already. Google doesn’t always have the best answer with these … [Read more...] about Those slick, new Google Lens features are rolling out now — here’s how they work

AMERICAN CHIPMAKER Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 710 SoC, the first chip in its new AI-focused 700 series. Qualcomm first detailed its 700 series at this year's Mobile World Congress, at the time claiming the processors will sit just below the 800-series when it comes to performance, delivering high-end AI features to mid-range mobiles. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 710, like the higher-end Snapdragon 845, is built on 10nm process technology. It's an octa-core chip, comprising of two performance Kyro 360 cores based on the Cortex-A75 architecture clocked at 2.2 GHz, and six efficient Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.7GHz. This setup, Qualcomm claims, will offer a 30 per cent performance boost compared to the Snapdragon 660, and a 40 per cent improvement in power efficiency. Naturally, artificial intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the chip, and Qualcomm is claiming thanks to its new multi-core engine, the 710 will offer twice the AI … [Read more...] about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 710 chip brings high-end AI smarts to mid-range mobiles